


Kingcup

by rakketyrivertam



Category: Leverage
Genre: Blood, Hanahaki Disease, Multi, dubious ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 13:44:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rakketyrivertam/pseuds/rakketyrivertam
Summary: Eliot knows he's dying.





	Kingcup

**Author's Note:**

> First fic for Leverage. I need more misunderstanding fics with established Hardison/Parker and the ot3 getting together. I can't believe this is the first Hanahaki fic in the fandom tag, the amount of angst is perfect.

Eliot had many previous experiences with choking. Sometimes it was kinky, and he enjoyed it. Sometimes it was not so kinky, and he definitely did not. Rarely (he liked to think), he choked on air or food or his own spit, just like normal people. This, though, this gasping and wheezing between blue lips stained red and orange with blood and poison flowers, this was new. And as unflappable as he was, Eliot was scared.

* * *

It started with little things. Parker held his hand as she skipped away from a job well done, and he watched her with a smile on his face and his heart in his gaze. Hardison played the jealous boyfriend again to his flirty love em and leave em routine and something lurched in his chest, too close to a truth he didn't realize he was desperately wishing for. They spent a meal staring into each other's eyes and that thing didn't snap, it yearned. Slowly, his breaths grew short, and his lungs grew crowded.

* * *

Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. He was used to being alone, alone he could handle, but it was so unbearably lonely here at what he could only assume was his end.

* * *

It had been his choice to leave. He couldn't hide the petals falling from his lips any longer. They would find out sooner or later - find out he loved them, find out he was _poison_.

* * *

The flowers growing in his lungs were _Caltha palustris_, or marsh-marigold. Large quantities could cause convulsions, burning of the throat, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, dizziness, and fainting. Its _Calendula_ cousins were used as replacements for saffron in cooking, so it was important for a cook to be able to tell the difference. Marigolds in general symbolized passion.

Passion and grief and cruelty. How fitting.

* * *

He rolled onto his side - or tried to - as another clump of bloody petals made itself known on the back of his tongue. He closed his eyes and imagined he could hear them.

Parker would punch him on the shoulder and it hurt. "You idiot."

He stretched his lips in a gruesome smile that didn't so much as touch the crows feet at the corners of his eyes. "I'm dying, Parker. You could at least let me go with dignity."

"You're not allowed," she would say.

Hardison would touch his shoulder, trying to soothe it from the force of Parker's affection. "We care about you, man, why didn't you tell us?"

And he helplessly answered "Didn't want to ruin a good thing."

"But we love you," Parker would say. No, she wouldn't, but he liked to imagine it anyway.

"Can't. Toxic. Too bloody."

And then Parker would kiss him, regardless of the blood, because of course she didn't care.

Hardison would screw up his face. "That's gross. But honestly, you're too good for us if anything."

The tears prickled up again, and then everything went mercifully black.

* * *

He woke up with one of them on each side. Parker's fingers laid over his wrist, feeling his pulse like she did only when she was truly scared for them. It was his own personal heaven.


End file.
